Save My Marriage Today – Review

Your marriage/relationship might hit the rocks sometimes. You’ve both stalled and nothing seems to make it right. Sometimes you know why, other times it’s not obvious, and you’ve just drifted apart.

That’s where Save My Marriage Today offers to step in and provide solutions to your troubled times. 

Written by relationship experts Amy Waterman and Andrew Rusbatch, it’s a course designed to help troubled relationships by providing suggestions and solutions for you to work on yourself. The premise is that you need to change in order to enact a change in your relationship and provide the platform for a new beginning.

Check out our head-to-head comparison of this marriage programme and two others here.

Reviewing the programme are:

• Robin, dad to one, based in London, who wanted to try the programme to improve his relationship. 
• And Paul, dad of two, based in Hampshire, who has struggled with his marriage since separating a few years back for a year and got back but in his own words “we are still always struggling with our marriage.

Initial impressions

After purchase you’re given the option to create a profile to log in to your portal and download your set of 11 books.

The main “Save my Marriage Today” course (which we will focus on here) comes in the form of a 156-page PDF.  According to Robin, these pages consist of “a combination of reading/learning and exercises to help add tangible understanding. Putting the theory into practice, if you will". 

In terms of first impressions, Paul had this to say: “When I first received the course I was very impressed by the structure of the course and the way it was personally tailored including a chance to have a personal email consultation.”

Going through the course

There are 20 chapters, and 38 exercises (some solo, some joint) - to work through which will hopefully provide answers, solutions and a greater understanding of yourself, your partner - and your relationship.

After reading it, you get one consultation, via email, to ask any burning question that isn’t answered within the publication.

The email function was something Paul in particular found useful - “The email session in particular was great as it allowed me to work on my strengths and weaknesses and encouraged me to open up to my wife about things. It encouraged me to communicate in different ways (not necessarily verbally) as communication is something I find quite difficult.”

In terms of the main book - it is a thorough piece of literature that will help a lot of people think about their marriage differently. There are many preconceptions about a relationship, much like when you decide to have a child. Sometimes you’re not even aware of them. 

‘Save my Marriage’ functions as a pseudo couples-therapist. It approaches each chapter with a non-judgmental, but firm viewpoint and sticks to it. There are regular phrases along the lines of:

“In order to enter into the spirit of negotiation, you need to have the right mindset. You should accept that conflicts are going to happen.”

Key learnings

Early on in the book they run through the Lifecycle of a Marriage - which is an excellent point of reflection. Wherever you are along that journey, it’s always pertinent to think about how you got there. This really helps set the tone.

There’s a lot of expectation management; “Life isn’t a Movie”, “Combating Conflicts” and the “Plateau” sections are especially apposite for bringing you back to reality. 

They cover a whole range of potential issues - some of which may be more meaningful to you. From sex (or lack of), children (too many?) and infidelity, to other common issues such as crisis management for various dependencies, depression and even just hitting that plateau in which it’s just… fine. 

The self-reflection and end-of-chapter exercises can be really poignant. Robin had this to say - “Some gave me more pause for thought than others, and obviously that will be different for each situation. For example, at one point they suggest having ‘zones’, designating specific places to have difficult conversations. This way of mapping out the house has helped with some of the intense conversations, as when you leave that area, you’re leaving that feeling.”

Reasons you should start the programme

1. It’s cheaper than going to therapy, and offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help analyse yourself and your marriage. The actionable elements do make it compelling and useful, with a sense of progress (and self-analysis!) evident after each exercise.

2. Each chapter is written by either Amy or Andrew - meaning a slightly different perspective on the problem within the chapter. This is useful as it means a more rounded approach than just having one author’s perspective.

3. In addition to the headline book, you also get access to a further 10 books - all of which are downloadable. They vary in length from about 30 pages through to around 200. 

The watch out

It’s worth noting that when you sign up, you’re signed up for an automatic monthly payment which you need to contact them directly to cancel. I had no issues with this once I’d filled out the form in the membership area.

Overall thoughts and does it work?

All in all, what you get for your money is a comprehensive set of literature full of tips and activities to help you remember why you fell in love in the first place. 

The 11 books are more than enough to set you on the road to a better place. 

Both of our dads got tremendous value from the programme, from the book, the email, and the add - ons. Every relationship is different, but a common theme from our dad reviewers is how it helped them and their partners think differently, and give them a set of tools to manage through a process, together. 

Based on our dads' experiences with the programme, we've given the Save My Marriage Today programme a score of 20.5/25.